What
I found so surprising is that Angela Merkel and Emanuel Macron were behaving
like two turtle doves when they met in Compiegne, the Northern French city
where the armistice was signed between France and Germany bringing the First
World War to an end on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month,
1918.

And
later they were sitting cozily side by side in the replica of the 1918 train
wagon and were smiling at each other. I would have preferred more dignity
and more humility.

For
example, the kissing of Angela Merkel and Emanuel Macron could have been
omitted. And Angela Merkel could have made a bow in honor of the soldiers
who fell in the terrible trench war started by Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm
II and the German Generals, the war mongers who had prepared the peoples
and the soldiers mentally as well as in reality to give their lives for
the 'good cause'.

It
is often said that after World War Two the European Union (established in
November 1, 1993, Maastricht, Netherlands) has prevented a new war that
could have come from the dominance of one country named Germany, the instigator
of World War II.

Let
me tell you. There are three major factors that saved Europe from a dominance
by either France or Germany and prevented another war.

1. The
Conference at Yalta - February 1945There
Winston Churchill, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and dictator Josef
Stalin divided Europe and cut the German territory in two sections that
later became two countries. That prevented that Germany would dominate again.

2. Founding
of the European Community of Coal and Steel - July, 1952Agreed
upon is that no particular country can dominate by amassing the available
coal and steel, the elements to forge weapons and start a war.

3. The
European Recovery Program - April 1948 - Marshal planThe
Americans decided to fund the Recovery Program - better known as Marshall
Plan - which meant that there were no repair payments imposed on Germany
and Austria like the allied forces had done after the First World War in
the Treaty of Versailles. Payments to be made by the besieged countries
would give unrest and could result in rebellion against the winning countries
and result in conflicts within the Europe of after the war.

When
the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and Germany was again the big country, there
were a few politicians who were not too happy with that event and the consequences.
It made them worry how the European Union would develop further. Among those
was French President François Mitterrand and Britain's Prime Minister Margareth
Thatcher.

Britain
and France "feared the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 would return Nazi-era
ambitions to Germany, exchanges between the two nations indicate," The
Telegraph reported in 2009. Initially that fear was not eminent, but
it soon happened that many a EU member state bowed to Germany again when
Angela Merkel took over after Gerhard Schröder resigned in 2005.

And
what they feared has happened. The European Union has lost much more of
its credibility and gradually much of its democratic nature.

Today
Germany is the member state that determines much of what is decided at meetings
in Brussels, Strassbourg and elsewhere. No wonder there is a critical attitude
of Poland's Mateusz Morawieck, Hungary's Viktor Orbán, Czech president
Milo Zeman, and to some lesser extend of Austria's Sebastian Kurz.

One
could conclude that we have arrived in the Fourth Reich.

Page
first published on November 13th, 2018

Added
on January 29, 2019,
Protest in front of Angela Merkel's chancellery!